AbstractFor the past twenty-nine years, Ignacio Bizarro
Ujpán (a pseudonym) has been keeping a diary about his life, town
(San José, a pseudonym), and country (Guatemala). During this
time, I have been translating and editing his story, and, to date, we have
published Son of Tecún Umán ([1981] 1990), Campesino
(1985), and Ignacio (1992). The last volume in this series,
Joseño,
will be published in 2001. This paper identifies and discusses prominent
themes in Ignacio’s story, using examples from each of these books to illustrate
the themes, and it offers insight into what it has meant to be a Tzutuhil
Maya Indian living in the mid-western highlands for nearly three decades.

IntroductionFor the past twenty-nine years, I have been
translating and editing the life story of Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán,
a Tzutuhil Maya Indian who lives on the shore of beautiful Lake Atitlán,
Guatemala. In 1972, at my behest, Ignacio wrote his autobiography and began
to keep a diary of what he considered to be the significant events of his
life, town, and country. Ignacio's story is unique, if for no other reason,
being that he is the only anthropological subject who has kept a diary
for more than a quarter of a century.1
To date, his life story is recorded in four volumes, three published and
one in press.

These volumes are important because they offer
personal insights into what has taken place among the present-day Maya
of Guatemala during the last two and one-half decades. Ignacio's account
is also significant because a number of general themes emerge from it that
help us better understand a different people in a different situation.
The purpose of this article is to present excerpts of episodes that illustrate
these themes. The themes and their accompanying episodes serve as an abridged
version of all four volumes of Ignacio’s life history. They are the story
of his life, family, town, and country.

Background
to Ignacio's StoryI met Ignacio in 1970 when I began my first
anthropological fieldwork in San José (a pseudonym) as part of a
team of researchers studying development and modernization in the 14 towns
surrounding Lake Atitlán. Ignacio lived across a rocky, unpaved
street from the house where I lived. When I asked him to be my research
assistant to help collect a random sample of interview schedules, he agreed.

During my third season in Guatemala, I decided
to approach Ignacio about keeping a journal of his life. Initially,
I had two main goals in mind: first, I wanted to give Ignacio something
to do for which I could pay him a reasonable wage, and second, I wanted
to stay in touch with what was happening in the area while I would be away,
finishing my doctoral thesis and teaching at a university.

I asked him to write about his family, town,
work, religious activities, and even his dreams. My instructions
were to keep accurate dates and times of important events. Following
Walter Dyk (1938), I encouraged Ignacio to record both mundane and sensational
events, and following Leo Simmons (1942), I also encouraged Ignacio to
first write an autobiography and then to keep a diary.

By the fall of 1974, Ignacio had given me the
first draft of his story in Spanish. And by the summer of 1975, I
had completed the first English version. There were, however, some
voids and confusion. In 1975 and 1976, I again traveled to Lake Atitlán
to ask Ignacio questions about his story. Some questions I asked
in San José; others I asked in the quiet and privacy of my rented
house in Panajachel.

In translating and editing the books, I stayed
as close as possible to Ignacio's own words to retain his patterns of speech.
In most cases, grammatical and stylistic concerns dictated a free translation.
For instance, I often insured that subjects and verbs agreed in number
and that verbs in paragraphs were consistent in tense. In some cases,
I deleted episodes that were trivial; in other cases, I asked Ignacio to
clarify or expand on a section of an episode. When I did so, you
will find my questions in italics.

After receiving official notice that the manuscript
had been accepted by the University of Arizona Press and that the title
would be Son of Tecún Umán: A Maya Indian Tells His Life
Story, I returned to Panajachel in August of 1980 to consult with Ignacio
for the last time before the book went to press. Despite the volatile
political situation in Guatemala, Ignacio and I were able to spend two
weeks discussing the pros and cons of anonymity. We concluded that
it would be in his best interest, as the Press recommended, to change all
the names of people and places in the general area except Lake Atitlán,
Sololá, and Panajachel. We also discussed the local usage
of Spanish words such as misterio, which is an older word used to
express going to the church to worship God, which is now equivalent to
rosario,
or rosary. In addition, we worked on new episodes that we would include
in a second volume.

Because of the delicate political situation
in 1980, I did not take the launch to visit San José on this trip.
After I sent a telegram to Ignacio, he came to see me in Panajachel.
When I met him near the pier, armed plainclothesmen were searching the
passengers disembarking from the launch. Ignacio told me about a
military curfew enforced in San José and about a kidnapping that
had taken place a week after my arrival in Panajachel.2

During a sabbatical in 1982, I translated and
edited plenty of pertinent material for the second volume. By this
time, problems of insurgency and counterinsurgency had become acute in
Guatemala, and Ignacio's diary reflected this reality. Because of
similar disturbances in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras, Central America
had become the focus of international attention. Thus, I spent most
of my sabbatical working to make the sequel as current as possible.

In July of 1982 I returned to Guatemala.
Of all the trips I have made, this one was the most worrisome. At
9:30 p.m. the taxi picked me up at La Aurora International Airport for
the ride across town to the Pan American Hotel in Zone 1. Although
the streets were wet from the light rain that had been falling, it seemed
strange that the main streets of the city were deserted so early and that
the usual smell of diesel wasn’t in the air. After an exquisite steak
dinner at the hotel, I went to bed tired, but I could not go to sleep.
I tossed and turned and finally dozed off about 2:30 a.m., but about two
hours later a loud blast that rocked my room awoke me. A clandestine
organization of the Left exploded a powerful bomb a few blocks away from
my hotel. The group blew up the office of Servicios Aéreos
de Honduras, Sociedad Anónima (SAHSA), to protest the presence of
the Honduran army in El Salvador.

At daybreak I walked over to inspect the damage
and take some pictures. Shattered glass covered the sidewalk, and
the surrounding area was swarming with police and special investigators.
On a nearby wall "Army out of El Salvador" was sprayed in black paint.
As an extra precaution, I spent an additional day in the city to go to
the U.S. Embassy to inform them who I was, where I was going, and when
I expected to be back.

The next day, I boarded the Rutas Lima bus.
Just before we reached Los Encuentros, the junction from the Pan-American
Highway that led south to Sololá, we encountered a roadblock set
up by the army. For the first time I was searched and asked for my
documents. An army private toting an Israeli-made Galil assault rifle
discovered my Swiss Army knife in the left pocket of my trousers and ordered
me to give it to him. He was going to keep it until the corporal
in charge heard us arguing and walked over and told him to give it back
to me. When he did, I was relieved.

The next day I took the launch to San José
for my first visit since 1976. There, Ignacio discreetly showed me
where the army had been encamped right outside the town center, where a
kidnapping had taken place in 1980, and where a woman I knew had been assassinated.
Seeing where these events had taken place helped me to edit the details
of the text with greater accuracy and to write the introduction, notes,
and appendices with greater clarity and conviction.

Later that week Ignacio joined me in Panajachel.
One night we worked late without realizing it. We walked across town
to eat dinner at the Blue Bird Restaurant, the only restaurant that was
dependably open because it catered to local patrons, not the tourists who
had quit coming to Guatemala because of the unrest. After dinner,
as we walked back to my rented house, Ignacio cautioned me to be careful
when an unlicensed, white pickup cruised by. Inside the vehicle were
three strangers in civilian clothes but whose hair was cut short like the
style of the members of the military. Ignacio said they were "desconocidos
[unknowns]" who might be involved in kidnappings.

That summer, despite the troublesome circumstances,
Ignacio and I were able to complete the work we needed to do on the next
book. In 1985 we published the next volume under the title,
Campesino:
The Diary of a Guatemalan Indian.

Still, Ignacio continued to record the events
of his life. I returned to Guatemala during the summer of 1987 and
during my second sabbatical in the summer and fall of 1988. By 1991
there was ample information for a third volume, and in January of 1992
the University of Pennsylvania Press published the third book as
Ignacio:
The Diary of a Maya Indian of Guatemala.

I closed this book with an episode about the
enemies of the socialist mayor of San Martín failing to remove him
from office. There was, however, no real closure to Ignacio's life
story, and he continued to record the events of his life as they unfolded.
I went back to Guatemala in the summers of 1992, 1994, 1995, and 1998.3
By February of 2000, I had translated and edited the fourth and final volume,
Joseño:
Another Mayan Voice Speaks from Guatemala, which The University of
New Mexico Press will publish in the fall of 2001. It covers the
story of Ignacio’s life and town from 1987 to 1999.

The Social
and Cultural Context to Ignacio’s Life StoryIn this final volume of Ignacio’s life story,
I updated information that places Ignacio within his social and cultural
context and describes how representative he is of his community (Sexton
and Bizarro 2001). What follows is a comparison based on both quantitative
and qualitative data collected over the last three decades.

Like numerous other Latin American Indians,
Ignacio is partially assimilated to a Hispanic culture, but he is not necessarily
representative of everyone in his community or culture in every respect
in a statistical sense. Unlike central figures of other life histories,
Ignacio is neither famous nor psychotic; he is an ordinary workingman.
Abandoned at birth on 13 August 1941 by his parents, his childhood was
hard. Despite his third-grade education, Ignacio is exceptionally perceptive,
and he gives a keenly insightful account of his eventful life.

Between 1971 and 1975 members of our field
school collected random samples of Joseños and Maya Indians
in thirteen other towns (919 household heads). These data clearly showed
that Ignacio is both alike and different from his countrymen with regard
to socioeconomic and psychological characteristics. Like his Indian countrymen,
Ignacio speaks a Mayan language and shares a cultural tradition that is
mixed with both Mayan and Spanish elements. Like numerous other countrymen,
he is socially and economically oppressed compared to richer Ladinos and
Spaniards in Guatemala and compared to citizens of more economically developed
countries.

Compared to the average Joseño
of his generation, Ignacio has been more exposed to the outside world through
formal education, travel, and military service. Although he served
in the Guatemalan army from 1961 to 1962 (Sexton [1981] 1990:35–46), his
unit was put on alert just once, when students from the University of San
Carlos were demonstrating in Retalhuleu against a state of siege. Fortunately,
his unit was not involved in any violence during this period.

Ignacio writes and speaks Spanish fluently,
and he has taught himself to type. Also, compared to his peers, he
has been more exposed to radio, films, and television and to newspapers,
magazines, and books. His superior literacy and greater political
knowledge are because of his greater exposure.

As a young man, Ignacio seemed somewhat more
oriented toward change than most other Joseños. He
appeared dissatisfied with his life condition and had high occupational
aspirations for himself and his children. Ignacio would have preferred
to have been a teacher rather than a farmer and a labor contractor. Although
he still grows corn, beans, squash, and coffee, he has not taken crews
to the coast to work on the cotton farms since 1984 because the guerrillas
made it dangerous for him and his crews and because the finqueros
exploited the laborers. Despite the low pay and poor working conditions,
he and his crews saved enough from their wages to buy their own modest
tracts of coffee land at home. Ignacio wanted his eldest son to become
a pharmacist, but he was realistic and understood that he would have to
settle for a less prestigious job such as a chauffeur. In fact, his
eldest son became a farmer, like Ignacio, but two of his siblings are among
the few children of Sanjoseños to earn their teaching credentials.
Ignacio's wife, who did not have the opportunity to attend school and who
felt deprived because she did not learn Spanish, also encouraged their
children. Whenever it was possible financially, Ignacio believed
in putting off his rewards to a later date, which helps to explain the
considerable patience he exercised in producing six books, including this
one. It also explains why he completed the technical training necessary
to become a baker and why he encouraged his sons to apprentice as operators
of foot looms.

Like other Joseños, Ignacio has
elements of a traditional worldview. He believes that a person’s
life is relatively fixed at birth, that it is better to accept things as
they happen because one cannot shape one's future, and that whether one
has good or bad luck depends on one’s heritage. But this fatalism
appears to be the result of realistically assessing his limited environment
rather than resistance to change.

Ignacio believes that one should perform ceremonies
before harvesting and planting, that there are spirits who may taunt people
during the night, and that some people, particularly shamans, can change
into their animal form, or nagual. Thus elements of Ignacio’s
nonmaterial culture are changing more slowly than aspects of his material
culture. In the latter stages of his life, Ignacio’s deep religious
convictions are reflected in his role as a principal.

Ignacio learned Tzutuhil Maya as his first
language. Although he has completed only the third grade of elementary
education, he is obviously highly intelligent, and he has learned Spanish
as a second language. During the turbulent era from 1970s through
the 1990s, none of Ignacio’s family was killed by right-wing forces, and,
according to Ignacio, neither he nor his fellow townspeople joined the
Organización del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA, Organization of the People
in Arms) which was active in his region of Lake Atitlán. They
viewed both the guerrillas and the army as being led primarily by Ladinos
who were using the Indians as pawns to advance their own political agendas.
Like his fellow Joseños, Ignacio is deeply religious, mixing
both traditional Mayan and Catholic beliefs and practices. Although
he has had extensive social interaction with Ladinos and North Americans,
he still is proud of his Mayan heritage. He married his wife, Josefa,
in 1962, and they have eight children and three grandchildren. Finally,
Ignacio continues to live the life of a rural campesino, like most other
Maya Indians. As a principal, he is an informal leader in
the religious, social, and political activities of his town.

Ignacio may not be representative of all Maya
Indians in the sense of an "everyman.” While present-day Maya Indians
share a general Mayan cultural heritage, including learning a Mayan language
as their first tongue and sharing traditional values and beliefs, and while
they generally have suffered from social, economic, and political repression,
there is a wide range of variation within and between towns with regard
to particular behaviors and beliefs (Sexton 1978, 2000; Sexton and Woods
1977, 1982; Sherman 1997).

Despite this variation, I followed Leighton
and Leighton (1939) and identified major themes that affected Ignacio,
his family, and his fellow countrymen who lived throughout the last three
decades of social and political turbulence. Instead of using one
major theme applicable to the main character (Ignacio), I identified a
number of themes running throughout the story that were also applicable
to the entire cultural region. For the purposes of this article,
I have selected six of these themes. They are: (1) alcohol and civil
violence, (2) community solidarity, (3) political violence and turmoil,
(4) resistance to repression, (5) campesinos caught between two fires4,
and (6) cultural revitalization. These themes are important not only
because they help us understand a different people living in a different
culture, but also because they describe the life story of a Maya Indian
in his own voice, “discussing the indigenous knowledge, perceptions, and
cultural traditions of the people of the region” (Scupin 1992:409).
In essence they present an insider’s view, a native ethnography (Bernard
and Salinas 1989:12, 14), rather than just the objective voice of an outside
ethnographer. The themes that I list are not exhaustive because
the reader of the complete account of Ignacio’s life can identify other
relevant themes such as grinding poverty, preoccupation with work, obsession
with time and prophetic dreams, the quest for spiritual rewards, and the
celebration of life and the mourning of death.

What follows are episodes that I chose from
each of the four volumes of Ignacio's story that illustrate each of salient
themes that I have emphasized above.5
I have listed the themes as general headings. Under the general headings,
I have included subtitles, or mini-themes, that illustrate the major themes.

General
Themes from Ignacio's Life Story

Alcohol and Civil
Violence

Felipe Fights with a Shaman: A Dire
Prophesy8 August 1970When we ran out of liquor, Felipe and I went
to a nearby bar to buy more. As we entered the bar, we noticed a
shaman named Agustín Sumosa from San Benito la Laguna. He
was with two Joseños [people of San José], Candelaria
Coché Méndez, and Carlos Bizarro Yojcom. Without doubt
they were buying aguardiente [rum] for ceremonies.

Felipe began to argue with the shaman. I don't
really know why or how it started. Perhaps Felipe was harboring disillusionment
with all shamans since he had lost an eye despite the ceremony performed
by Señor Gregorio Sánchez Tuc for protection of all of us
dancers during the fiesta of San Juan. In any case, Felipe and the shaman
from San Benito began to fight violently. One of Felipe's blows broke the
collarbone of the poor shaman, and he cried out in pain. He had reason
to cry because the blow was a severe one. The two Joseños
for whom he was going to perform a ceremony of some kind began to cry too,
since they pitied their hapless friend.

Señor Agustín, the injured shaman,
groaned to his enemy Felipe:

Today you struck me for the first
time, but you will never strike me again because it is certain that you
are going to die. To the justice of the peace of San José,
I will not go. Instead, I am going to take my case to El Dueño
del Mundo [God of the World, Earth]. For sure you are going to
die [because I am going to perform a ceremony that will put a death curse
on you].

Community Solidarity

The February Earthquakes4-6 February 1976As soon as he left, I laid down again on my
bed, but I could not get to sleep. I was just turning on a light when suddenly
a monstrous earthquake hit! I managed to get out of bed. My wife got out
of bed, but we could not reach the children. It was terrible! We were not
able to walk, and then the lights went out! We remained in complete darkness
in the dead of night. At last I was able to reach my horrified children
and get them out of the house onto the patio. It was 3:02 a.m. Wednesday.

Immediately we heard a great bustle of people
from the other houses. Like us, my neighbors were very frightened. Some
were crying, others were on their knees praying for God's mercy. We spent
the rest of this dreadful night outside our house in the patio. Otherwise,
if another quake hit, we might be crushed if the house collapsed and the
heavy roof fell on us.

Finally, it was dawn, and we gave thanks to
God for having given us anew the light of day! As the sun came out and
provided light, we calmed down somewhat. By day, one is able to control
himself better.When I turned on the radio, I heard that 23,000
have died and 80,000 are wounded and 1,000,000 are homeless. How pitiful
was this news! We were in deep agony because we still felt the many tremors,
and at any time another strong one could hit again.

Today [Friday, 13 February] officers of Catholic
Action sent a contribution of $175 for relief of earthquake victims throughout
Sololá, not just San José. The officials entrusted this money
to Father Jorge H. Rodríguez of the parish of San Martín
la Laguna [who also serves the church in San José because there
still is no resident priest]. He will send the money to the bishop of the
diocese of Sololá who will take charge of the distributions to the
people in need. I think this is a very good thing!

Political Violence
and Turmoil

Señora María Luisa Is Murdered18-19 August 1981I said, "Let's hurry up and go because it
is late. Soldiers or guerrillas could come. We are late! Let's go, let's
go!" And each person left for his house. Then I accompanied the treasurer
through the center of the town to his house for safety, because he was
carrying money that belonged to the cooperative. After seeing my companion
home, I went directly to my house.

When I arrived home, my family was already
asleep. It was certain that the two pieces of bread had not satisfied my
hunger, but since it was the middle of the night, my family had already
eaten. Then I noticed that my señora had left me some tamalitos
[little tamales], good and hot and folded in three napkins. She had also
left fish. I said, "Ah, I'm still going to eat." I went to the fire where
there was hot coffee, and I began to eat.

Suddenly someone knocked three times. "Púchica!"
it scared me. I quit eating and remained still. About two minutes later,
thinking they had left, I began to eat again.

Again there were three knocks on my door, and
a strange voice said, "Ignacio."

"But who is this?" I said to myself.
"Who is saying my name? Who can it be? Púchica, should
I try to eat again?" Man, it was a scare they gave me! "Are they going
to tear down my door? Who knows? Is it some bully?" But nothing happened.

After about two minutes I opened the door,
and since there is a streetlight near, I could see that there was no one
there, neither above nor below the street. There was just total silence.
Then I shut the door and continued eating. Since I was frightened while
I was eating, I had to rest a little before going to sleep to avoid indigestion.
I grabbed a book and began to read a little.

After about 15 to 20 minutes of reading the
book, I fell fast asleep because it was late and I was very sleepy. It
must have been about 12:00 midnight or 12:15 when I fell asleep.

What ended my sleep was the bang of arms. I
heard the noise of the machine gun--ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta.

"Púchica! My God! What is happening!"
I said as I was waking up. "Get up, hombre! Hombre, get up! Something
is happening in the town!" But no one answered me, neither my children
nor my señora. They were fast asleep. Then I heard a very
loud shot, "Bong!" It was the tiro de gracia [finishing shot].

"Ah, Christ, someone died. Is it the army or
the guerrillas? Which of the two groups? My God!" I said. The most I slept
was about 20 minutes or a half hour. It is true that I did not have a watch,
but I turned on the radio and they gave the hour, which was 12:45 a.m.
I turned out the light and thought about many things. They could arrive
at my house, and they could find us culpable if they saw my light on because
we were late at the cooperative. I knelt before the image of Jesucristo
and put myself in the hands of God for anything that might happen. I stayed
in bed, but I did not sleep.

Ten minutes after the burst of machine gun
fire, a launch left for San Martín making a lot of noise, but we
did not hear or realize when it had come. But the launch belongs to the
father-in-law of the military commissioner in San Martín because
it is the only one with such a [distinctive] sound.

About a half hour later I heard people passing
to wake Castillo, a brother of the woman [who was shot]. I thought
that perhaps there might have been an illness. I did not know that they
had killed her.

Then I put on my clothes. "I am going to investigate,"
I said to myself. But later I said that I did not want problems. And someone
might be able to say that we were late at the cooperative. So I decided
not to go out. I stayed in my house, although I did not sleep at all.

At 4:30 a.m. we heard the death knell [of the
Catholic Church].

"Púchica, someone died," said
my señora.

"Yes, I wanted to tell you, but you did not
get up." The bells continued--bong, bong. And the president of Catholic
Action began to say with a loudspeaker, "All Catholics, come console the
husband of the señora who last night was killed by whichever group,
whose body today is going to Sololá."

Well, then I put on my clothing and got up.
But I did not go to console the husband. I went to the pier. When I arrived
to investigate, I saw the blood and all. There were a lot of bullet holes--they
were countless, perhaps a hundred. The authorities were resting at a house
that was on the other side of the road, and they were still examining the
projectiles. It was grave, it was grave. Her two legs were destroyed. I
did not see it happen, but the official news says that she was shot 17
times. They say that there were two groups. One waited in front of the
door in the street while the other entered from inside the sitio
[homesite]. When she ran into the street, they machine-gunned her. There
were still bloodstains in the street where she fell. They also say that
the men who came to kill her brought a guide dressed in the clothing of
San Luis with typical trousers, no shoes, and a black chupa [tight-fitting
waistcoat], purely of San Luis. But it is suspected that he was a
Joseño,
a commissioner.

Resistance to Repression

Warnings by the Military Commissioners12-17 August 1985On 14 August we went to work a half-day, making
bread. In the afternoon, again we had to return to the soccer field to
receive classes from the military. On this day there were no jefes. They
said that they were bad, but that is not true. The [military] officials
who arrived on this day were very humane, and they didn't mistreat anyone.
They said that no one is able to accuse another person of subversion or
anything else. First they have to investigate the case of the person to
be sure that he is collaborating with the subversives. The official said:

Many come to accuse another person
just because they are envious about a business deal or a problem with a
woman or a piece of land or perhaps one person has more money than another,
and then the person is accused of being a subversive. This is what you
must not do. In San José nothing should happen as it has in other
towns.

All the patrolmen were grateful.

On 15 August 1985 we only worked a half-day
again because they told us that in the afternoon there would be classes
again. However, because of heavy rain, we only received a half-hour of
class. Many were not in agreement with these things, but one has to obey
because if one does not it is expensive--one pays with one's life.

We didn't work on 16 August 1985. We lost this
day. After lunch we went to a new soccer field at 3:00 p.m. We sang the
hymn of the patrolman. Moreover, we received classes on how to handle and
shoot the Mauser (7.62mm) rifle. There was a lot of nervousness among the
personnel of the patrolmen, especially those who had not had military service.
At times it was very funny. Many were not happy with these orders, but
we were unable to do anything about it.

On 17 August, Saturday, all of us patrolmen
had to be present in the soccer field very early to form military squads.
It is certain that when we arrived, they formed [assigned] us and took
us to the place where one is able to shoot. Then they took us, five in
each group, and each person shot three times [those who had not had military
service]. Those of us who had served in the military were separated out
as reserves to take care of those who hadn't.

We were last. But we were only given one shot
each. Some didn't shoot any because we ran out of ammunition. [I shot once.]
We didn't finish until noon.

When we finished all of these things, the military
officials were grateful for the participation of all the patrolmen. But
there is one thing. The patrolmen murmured about losing time because we
are poor and aren't accustomed to losing it. The murmuring that the patrolmen
did was in Tzutuhil, and the officials are Ladinos who don't understand
the bad words that the Indians speak. When the officials asked what it
was that they were saying, others said that they were happy and saluted
the military. But these were lies. The people actually spoke badly of them.

What kinds of things were the patrolmen
saying?

They said: son-of-a-bitch, mother-fucker, go
to hell, but they said these words in Tzutuhil, and when the jefes asked
what they were saying, the others answered, "They are very happy."

Campesinos Caught
Between Two Fires

Guerrillas Burn Buses and Murder Drivers
and Their Assistants5 February 1982

The news on the radio said that in the afternoon
the guerrillas arrived between Panajachel and San Jorge and between Sololá
and Los Encuentros, and that they burned two Rebuli buses and killed three
drivers and two assistants. My companions of the Partido Institucional
Democrático [PID, Institutional Democratic Party] and I were planning
to make a trip on Saturday to receive a short course in politics. But when
my companions heard the news, they became very scared and did not want
to go. Nevertheless, Erasmo Ignacio [Ignacio’s son], my friends Benjamín
and Felipe, and I decided to go.

At 6:00 a.m. on Saturday we boarded the launch,
but when we arrived in San Martín the people were talking about
what happened yesterday. [At first] I thought they were just telling lies.
However, when we arrived in Panajachel, everyone was frightened. There
was no activity in the town.

An owner of a cantina told me to be careful
because
the guerrillas were nearby. I replied to this señor how we had heard
this on the news yesterday but that we thought it was a lie. Then the señor
told me that yesterday the most unfortunate things happened. Above [on
the ascent to Sololá just before the Catarata Fall] they killed
Don Missael and his helper. I asked him how this happened, and he told
me that the guerrillas took out the driver and shot him in front of his
wife and children. Then they asked his assistant for the money, but he
said he did not want to give it to them. After killing the driver, they
poured gasoline on the bus and set it afire. Then they grabbed the helper
by the hands and feet and threw him into the fire alive--in front of all
the passengers. This is what the man said, and it scared me.

But finally we boarded a [small shuttle] bus
for Sololá. When we passed the place where they had killed the two
men, the bus was still there burning. I am sure that many people did not
get to take their belongings because there were many burnt items like suitcases,
trousers and shirts, and other things. Without doubt, a lot of people
were not able to take down their bags because the situation was serious.
The wind of the fire blew away pieces of clothing. It was a grave burning,
and it was frightening just to look at it. One could smell the foul odor
of burnt flesh.

The driver, who was a witness to the killing
of Don Missael, the driver of the Rebuli bus, confirmed the news. He said
that he was ascending to Sololá in his [small] bus and Don Missael
was descending in the [larger] Rebuli bus, which had begun the trip in
Guatemala [City]. One group of guerrillas stopped Don Missael, and another
group stopped him before the two buses met. They made him get down from
his vehicle.

"I was trembling," he said, "but they took
only my money, the day's earnings--$64." In front of him they machine-gunned
Don Missael. Then the guerrillas asked Missael's helper for the money [he
had collected from the passengers], but he said, "I am not going to give
it to you." He was afraid of the owner of the money [his boss]. The
bus was now burning. They threw gasoline on it, and it was very hot and
flaming. They grabbed the helper by his hands and feet and threw
him onto the fire alive, and it flared up. This man [our bus driver] told
us that they did not recover the remains of the helper's body. It was totally
consumed by the fire. However, they did not burn Don Missael's body. This
man told us that the guerrillas obliged him to return [to Panajachel] if
he did not want to die. He said that he did not eat or sleep after what
he had seen. He asked his boss to let him off work until Tuesday, but his
boss said that, if he did not wish to work, he would hire someone else
to be the driver.

When we arrived in Sololá, they told
us the same thing had happened on the road to Los Encuentros--the guerrillas
had burned another bus. Also, they said that they had killed the driver
and his helper. They said that the guerrillas wanted to burn a third
bus, but after they threw gasoline on it, it did not catch fire. When they
saw it was not going to burn, they broke the windows with [machine-gun]
bullets. We saw this bus towed by another vehicle. When we arrived
in Panajachel, it was in front of the police station for a while.

It was totally sad when we were in Sololá.
There was no activity. All the people were scared, including the señor
who was going to give us a short course. Our trip to Sololá was
hardly important. [There was no short course.]

We could not return to San José on the
same day because there was no launch. Thus, we wanted to return via Los
Encuentros, but they told us that there was still a confrontation between
the guerrillas and the soldiers. In front of us arrived a vehicle of the
bomberos
[firemen; rescuers] with 16 bodies stacked in it like firewood. We saw
them unload three of the bodies of people who had died in the confrontation
in Los Encuentros. A lot of the indigenous people, who were with the dead
bodies of their kin, were crying. It scared all of us very much. We wanted
to return through San Diego, but the news said that in every direction
there were guerrillas. We had to bear staying in Panajachel, but it was
a pity that not one of us carried bedclothes. Only the boy, Erasmo Ignacio,
carried a sack.

Because the news said that no one was able
to walk after 6:00 p.m., we went to eat dinner at 4:00 p.m. By 7:00 p.m.
the residents had already deserted the streets. There were a lot of police,
soldiers, and detectives (judicial police). It was a pain to walk. We did
not go anywhere because of the great fear. When night fell, I did not hear
a single car pass in the street.

During this night we suffered a lot because
we did not have bedclothes and we tried to sleep on the sand. Later it
got very cold. I put my son Erasmo Ignacio inside the sack he carried,
but it was still too cold. Then I asked the conductor of the launch, who
is a very good person named Nicolás, to let us go inside. Only when
we were inside did we feel a little relieved. We slept a little, but it
was not like sleeping at home. The pilot of the launch told us to take
special care because the guerrillas had said that they have marked the
launches for burning within a few days. It scared us!

14 to 22 October 1990This is what is taking place in our pueblo
of Santiago Atitlán, land of the ancient King Tepepul. There is
much more violence in this year of 1990 than there was in previous years.
Day after day there are more massacres of the naturales [Indians]
of our beautiful Tzutuhil town. It seems, however, that the two sides are
claiming victims and many more than in October of this year. Almost on
a daily basis, the Tzutuhiles are killed by the bullets.

Truthfully, I did not witness this. I learned
of it through the news on the radio and from the talk of the people living
around the lake, both of which condemned the massacre of the six tradesmen
who were returning from Cerro de Oro with a truckload of avocados. At the
said location, they were all shot, and their bodies were strewn over the
road. It is said that one of the assassins, seeing that one of the victims
still lived, pulled out a sharp machete and split open his chest and neck.
It was said these killers were thieves, although no concrete evidence supported
this. What was known for sure was that the six victims were naturales
and residents of Santiago Atitlán, Sololá. The truck driver
was a Ladino. He was able to save his life, although he received
many blows. He said he was told to drive the truck to the town, and he
did as he was told. It was clear that in our Tzutuhil town of Santiago
Atitlán there was no longer any respect for human rights.

Propriety and Cultural
Revitalization

Receiving the Image of the Saint in the
CofradíaWhen the image of San Juan Bautista arrived
at the new cofradía, that is to say, in my house, the principales
and the rest of the group sat down. Then came the most sacred part when
I, the new alcalde, welcomed the principales, paying the
homage to them that they deserved. Thus I said:

In memory of our deceased fathers,
whose bodies are now the dust of the earth but whose spirits are with us.
They are with us watching and listening. They are with us here in spirit
through the medium of the air and through the medium of the aroma of myrrh
and copal.7

Now you principales are
the cement and the foundation of our race and our traditions, the fighters,
defenders, and conservators of our Mayan
costumbres. You are the
ones who take care of our culture, from our birth and growth until we reach
the age where we are your followers and successors, if the creator and
maker, Heart of Heaven and Earth, wills it. Now, on this day, we are receiving
the patron saint, [with] you principales of white hair and white
beards [that you have] as a gift of God and of the patron saint, San Juan Bautista.8
We, your children, are disposed to conserve and continue what you have
sown and what you have cultivated. We can neither forget nor abandon our
costumbres,
our traditions, which is what forms the bastion of our Mayan culture.

After drinking the atol, the principales,
Catholic Actionists, madres de familias [mothers of families], and
chorus said good-bye to the new cofradía and went to the
church, and from the church they dispersed to their houses. That
is to say, the fiesta was over.

SUMMARY
AND CONCLUSIONThe episodes above--which emphasize the general
themes of alcohol and civil violence, community solidarity, political violence
and turmoil, resistance to repression, campesinos caught between two armies,
and propriety and cultural revitalization--provide an uncommonly rich description
of some of the most important events that have happened to Ignacio, his
family, his town, and his country in the last thirty years. The full texts
provide a more compressive picture, and in them, the reader may identify
themes other than the ones I have mentioned–-themes that also illustrate
their humanity. For example, it may be argued, that Ignacio's story also
illustrates how the present-day Maya celebrate life and mourn death, how
they seem to have an obsession with time and prophetic dreams, and how
they are generally poor in material possessions but rich in spiritual beliefs
and practices. In any case, in our pursuit for a better understanding of
a different people living in a different culture, we are indeed fortunate
to have such an articulate spokesperson as the Tzutuhil Maya elder, Ignacio
Bizarro Ujpán.

NOTES1. Other subjects
have kept diaries, but I am unaware of anyone else who has kept such a
personal, chronological record for this length of time. I wish to thank
my wife, Marilyn, and my research assistants, Lorenzo Sotelo and Charles
Wright, for reading and giving me comments on this abridged version. I
also thank my research assistants who worked on the full versions. They
are Teresa Kelleher, Mimi Hugh, Gwenn Gallenstein, Lisa Leap, Rose Marie
Havel, David Ortiz, Victoria Spencer, Mauricio Rebolledo, Lisa Hardy,
and Christina Getrich. Return to reading.2. For Ignacio's
description of what happened in his town at this time, see Campesino
1985: 174-183. Return to reading3. In Campesino,
Ignacio recorded some folktales that were told during particular episodes
of his life story. When I expressed special interests in these tales, he
said there were a lot of them and that we should do an entire volume of
them. We did. In May of 1992, we published Mayan Folktales: Folklore
from Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, and it was republished in 1999.
Also in 1999 we published a second book of folklore, Heart of Heaven,
Heart of Earth and Other Mayan Folktales. Return to
reading4. Ly-qui-Chung
(1970) pointed out that peasants of the Vietnam war were caught in the
middle of two fires (armies). David Stoll (1993; 1999) discusses
the same theme for the Ixil, and Richard Wilson (1995) mentions it for
the Q'eqchi' Maya. Return to reading5. Information
from the subtitles, "Felipe Fights with a Shaman: A Dire Prophecy," and
"The February Earthquakes," first appeared in Son of Tecún Umán:
A Maya Indian Tells His Life Story ([1981] 1990: 65-66, 135, 140-141),
Waveland Press, copyrighted by James D. Sexton. Information from
the subtitle, "Señora María Luisa Is Murdered," first appeared
in Campesino: The Diary of a Guatemalan Indian (1985:254-256), the
University of Arizona Press, copyrighted by James D. Sexton. Information
in the subtitles, "Warnings by the Military Commissioners," first appeared
in Ignacio, the University of Pennsylvania Press, copyrighted by
James D. Sexton. Information from the subtitle, "Guerrillas Burn
Buses and Murder Drivers and Their Assistants," first appeared in Campesino
(1985: 287-289). Information from the subtitles, "The Violence in
Santiago Atitlán," and "Receiving the Image of the Saint in the
Cofradía" are selected from Joseño: Another Mayan Voice
Speaks from Guatemala, The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque,
copyrighted by James D. Sexton and Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán.
More information about these books and about Ignacio and me can be found
at my web site, www.mayaguate.com.
Return
to reading6. This is the
real name of the town in question. In the other episodes of Ignacio's
story I have changed the names of all the towns except Panajachel and Sololá.
Return to reading7. The aroma of
the incense calls their spirits to come and be with the person or persons
burning it. Return to reading8. Ignacio explained
that to reach old age is a gift of god, and you can't buy white (grey,
hairs). This may make those of us who have them feel better. Return
to reading

REFERENCES
CITEDDyk, Walter. 1938. Son of Old
Man Hat: A Navajo Autobiography. Recorded by Walter Dyk.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.